


West Wind in the Morning

by emblazonet



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Beachcombing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2409368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emblazonet/pseuds/emblazonet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two young Dunmer cousins, with bad blood between them, beachcomb near Khuul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	West Wind in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This is a writing exercise that got a bit out-of-hand and turned into a fic about Dunmer commoners, because I like Dunmer, and why not? A fictional world isn't just about heroes, after all.

The dawn sun over Khuul was pink edged with burnt umber, its light smudging fleshily into the water and the distant hills and the clouds. I could see the ripples flowing from the curve of the sea down to me, where my legs batted the air up above the barnacle-encrusted, salty-white legs of the dock. My cousin said it stank here. Dead fish rotting under the sun, when the sun finally rose. It takes time here at the northern tip of Vvardenfell for dawn to finally break into day. Sometimes I worry that actually, dawn will reverse into sunset, and the light will fade, and it will be night forever or for as long as makes no difference.

            Most of the time I don't smell a thing but salt and the headiness of water and the south wind bringing a taste of ash with it. That dawn the wind was westerly, and the west wind was the worst wind. It brought the stink of the tannery that's halfway to Ald Velothi. West wind days always bring bad luck. I wanted to run back to the house and bury my head under the quilt. But there's chores so I didn't.

            Same round of chores I've done for the past seventeen year: egg gathering, kelp gathering or beachcombing while the tide was out—there's a hundred things you can find on the beach. I've got good calloused feet that don't mind neither sharp rocks nor shells, nor glass half-smooth or the like. By the sun's height I'll know when it's noon—and if it's cloudy or foggy I'll make a best guess by how close the tide's a-coming—and then it's midday meal.

            Which is at home, which meant I'll bite my cheek and tongue fiercely from snapping at Nisha, my lazy good-for-naught cousin who, if she's afraid the wind will chap her fine fine skin, could spin at the least, but really all she does is comb her hair and maybe try to embroider for all of ten breaths, and pretend to putter about the kitchen, though Mother will be damned if Nisha touched a single pan or pat of butter. Nisha is a disaster.

            The sun was hardly up when Mother brought Nisha to me on the dock. The west wind was true, then: the day was cursed. Nisha rubbed her eyes and yawned. Mother, who kept good hours same as I did—same of the rest of us, Father and my four older brothers—was daisy-fresh. Her cheeks flushed purplish-red under her dusky-grey skin, and she gripped Nisha tightly around the arm.

            "Lorliah, take Nisha to the beach. You've got a basket apiece, and don't come back unless the tide's chasing you. If those baskets are even half empty, you'll both get a hiding."

            I jumped to my feet. "Both of us!" I cried, and I'm sure my cheeks were splotchy purple-red and ugly with it. I was more surprised than anything: hidings were for children, and my surprise made me react like a child. "That layabout won't even—"

            "Mind yourself," Mother snapped.

            Stupid Nisha blinked at me. There was sleep-sand crusted in the corners of her eyes. I snorted, grabbed both baskets and my useless cousin, and marched her off the dock and onto the receding sprawl of beach.

            Nisha had to be shown everything. Been here the whole summer long, and now that it's Hearthfire—chilling to autumn, some leaves brittle, golden-edged—and she's useless as a newborn calf. I supposed I'd been lucky, spending the summer without minding her in the mornings.

            I had to show her how to hike up her shirt and tuck the sides into her belt, where to put our sandals by a nearby tidepool so we could rinse the sand off our feet when we got back.

            "Wha're we lookin' for?" she asked sleepily, sliding her basket onto her arm with a bemused expression. Her black hair was braided into a practical tail that whipped up now and again if the wind gusted. Thick black hair, with a sheen like a shalk shell.

            "Anything valuable," I said. "Shells, mostly. Especially intact ones, or ones with natural holes that'll work well for embroidery."

            Nisha wiped her eyes, and blinked out at the shimmering beach. She doesn't always look at a mer who's talking, so I don't always know if she understands me. I continued anyway: I'm a hard enough worker that if I had to, I'd do her whole basket for her.

            "Keep an eye out for anything that glitters," I continued as we walked. Nisha gingerly stepped around rocks and shell splinters. "Sometimes we get soul gems, whole or sea-worn, and those we can sell to Thongar for a nice sum."

            "Do they have souls in them?" said Nisha, facing me for the first time. I always forget how pretty she is, how plump her cheeks are—they ate well, our Sarandus kin in Ald'Ruhn. Nisarame Sarandus, that's her full name, and she's a full two years older than me. Her betrothed and her parents died, something to do with blight, and that's why Uncle Tiras sent her to us, because there wasn't anywhere else for her to go. It's because she doesn't know a trade. All her life, she was going to marry. That's a whole trade, in the big cities, getting married. Very strange.

            As to whether the soul gems contained souls—"I'm not a wizard," I said. "How should I know? Passing mages pay a fortune for them, I guess."

            "Soul gems aren't that expensive," Nisha said scornfully. "Uncle Tiras sells the little blue ones for maybe ten septims if the mer's easy to cheat."

            "Well, that's big city prices," I snapped. "You found any shells yet?"

            Abruptly Nisha stooped, gently lifted a shiny something, and shook it and blew on it. It was a long shell, a deep, deep blue, and speckled with flecks of creamy white. It was intact, its inner lining pearlescent. She waved it in front of my face. "There! How's that?"

            I nodded and looked away. "It's good. Find about two-dozen more and some driftwood chunks good for whittling, and you'll save us both a hiding."

            "I don't know why Aunt Nelmyne sent me out here," said Nisha, "It's cold and it smells bad."

            "Because you need to earn your keep," I said, no longer pretending to be nice. "You're a whole extra mouth to feed, and do you know how much that costs?"

            "Before your brothers moved out, Aunt fed them."

            "Because they worked, damnit! They fished, and hunted, and carved and—spun, even, when Mother couldn't, and you can't even manage that!" I finished, yelling, while Nisha shrank away from me like a kwama curling from the cold.

            She didn't say anything, just looked up at the sun riding over the east. I snorted and bent over. Three shells of a good size to make into pendants or some such. The best luck was the plate-sized ones, because you could store things in them and they looked pretty—I spotted one a few paces away and hurried to retrieve it. Some of the shells were from seaside creatures, little crabs and the like that walked on the sand, or deep-sea creatures that bore whorled armour that sparkled or shone when wet. Sometimes there were big cracked shells from mudcrabs or molecrabs, and shards of chitin from any number of Vvardenfell's big, dangerous beetles, shalk, kwama workers, or whathaveyou.

            I found quite a number of pretty stones as I strayed from Nisha's side. Stones you have to be careful with. I dry them on my skirt to see if the bright colours that drew me to them remain when the stone isn't wet. Usually that isn't true, but I lucked out: several redstripy stones and one that was blue like the shell Nisha had found, though the colour was less rich when dry. I had a basket a quarter full of stones, shells and some likely driftwood, when I realized Nisha had crouched near a tidepool unmoving. She had her back to me and was far enough away that I could barely see that she hugged her shawl tight around her shoulders.

            I stalked up to her like my heels were on fire and grabbed her shoulder. "What are you doing, Nisha?" I demanded. "You've got what? Five shells in your basket? Get to work!"   She flinched. I looked down at the tidepool. Nothing interesting there: algae, and strings of bulbous kelp, and some bugs and a few tiny fish.

            It took me a few moments to realize what she was doing, and it only came to me when she sniffed. She was crying.

            At that moment I was so mad I could've called lightning onto her head, or sicced a blighted kagouti on her, or something else awful. Course, I'm not a mage or an animal-speaker, so I couldn't do anything but curl my hands into fists to keep from punching her in her stupid pretty head.

            "I always wanted to see the sea," Nisha mumbled. "Droras said he'd bring me to the coast. Well, he meant the Ascadian Isles, where it's safer and prettier. I hate the Ashlands." She shivered. She had pulled out her skirts so they covered her naked legs. "So dry and empty and barren. He was a hunter. He got too close to the Ghostfence."

            "Why are you telling me this?" I snapped. "We have work to do."

            "You never seen anyone die of blight," she said, turning suddenly and standing, her eyes suddenly molten with a fury that more than matched my own. "You never see them go pale, and—and white against the corners of their mouth, and their eyes sink away—and it was a fast case, the healers couldn't do a damn thing because by the time he'd stumbled out of the Ashlands it'd killed something inside him, like. And he passed it to my parents, and they took potions, but it didn't work, because the blight is strange, it hits you inside somehow, in many places, and if the potions work, you might sweat, vomit—crap it all out, all the poison, until you're chill and shaking, and still, there's something in you, and so it launches a fresh attack, and if you keep taking potions you get thinner and thinner..."

            "What about the cure? I heard they were making a cure. At the Temple. Somewhere." I hadn't meant to engage, but she was backing me up over the sand. For once, planting her feet over the shell-laden sand as if they were as tough as mine. I spoke to her out of a kind of desperation, as if by mentioning a cure I could reach back in time and save the uncle and aunt I'd never met.

            "Sure," said Nisha, tears in her eyes. "Maybe, for the nobles. Or if they get it in time. If it's diagnosed right. See, they thought they had something else. That's half the problem. But anyway, the blight cures are new, untested—it could've killed them, Lorliah, I don't know! Does it matter? THEY'RE DEAD."

            And then she stopped. Like some mage'd whacked her with paralysis. Her face was ugly with grief, drooping as if she'd aged several hundred years or more. I hadn't realized her eyes had grown so sunken over the summer. Her eyes looked as if she had looked upon Dagoth Ur himself, not merely his evil works. I held my breath as the moment stretched around us.

            She fell to her knees before I knew it had happened. I might've tried to catch her. She sobbed, burying her face in her shawl. I crouched beside her and gingerly patted her shoulder, over and over, as if she were a housecat.

            She hadn't cried all summer, I supposed. I'd never seen her cry, or heard her, and our shack has silk-thin walls. The crying was like pus from a just-lanced wound. I crouched until my thighs were hot as lava, and then I kept at it, petting Nisha, because I didn't know what to do, and I felt very small and ugly and ungrateful, like the baby cliff racer I'd raised when I was eight year old, only, at the moment, less loud.

            I passed her a handkerchief when her sobs subsided, so that she didn't have to wipe her nose on her shawl.

            "Thanks," she said hoarsely. She stood, and I stood, and watched while she clumsily tucked her skirts back up in her belt. Her legs were bleeding in quite a few places, because she'd gone to her knees on a pile of shells. Just soft sand beside her there, but no, she'd fallen on those shells. I had another handkerchief, so I dabbed at her knees and shins.

            "Don't walk into the water," I recommended. "It'll sting like daedra teeth."

            She shook her head and tried a smile. It wobbled off her face at once. "I won't. I—Lorliah—"

            I shrugged uncomfortably, fussing with my own shawl to keep from looking at her. "I've never really lost anyone close to me. I just... I never thought how you'd feel."

            "I didn't really think about how you and Aunt must feel, either," she said, picking up her basket. "I've just gone to pieces and made more work for everyone, haven't I?"

            I shrugged. "Yeah."

            She rolled her shoulders and stood up a bit straighter. "Then I'd better find some shells and things."

            The tide was low almost all the way out to Sweetheart Island, where there's a little beach beside a waterfall, popular for trysts. As we walked, the tide lapped closer, slowly. By my estimate, we had another two hours before the tide came in.

            "This a ... a seed?" asked Nisha, holding up a brown object about half the size of her palm.

            I nodded. "We plant 'em, they turn into trees, different kinds. They say Almalexia sends them on the seas, as a blessing to those who live on the shores. Bring them in with the rest."

            We beachcombed in silence for a while. I thought about what it would be like to lose everything, go somewhere different, and not know how to do anything. Thinking about it that way, I realized how unfair I'd been to Nisha. It wasn't hard to go from that to being cross with myself for being unkind. I'd never thought of myself as cruel. To be perfectly fair, I didn't spend much of my day thinking about myself in relation to anyone. Life was always like this: wake up, take the morning alone, do what chores are agreed-upon (and now that I'm majority-aged, I have some say at what I do) and seasonal. I knew everyone in Khuul, other Dunmer, Nords, the Redoran tax-collector and official, the smugglers that came to our docks, the few Khajiit, and how I felt about them and acted toward them hadn't changed much.

            "Hey Nisha," I said. Our baskets were over half-full now, and I'd relaxed. It'd been a good beach today, plenty of debris to sort through. By the end of Hearthfire, it would probably be too cold for beachcombing. Not exactly Skyrim-cold—the Nords always complained about how hot Vvardenfell was—although we had a snowfall once, four year back. One day. It had melted on contact with the ground.

            "Yeah?" said Nisha, eyeballing a driftwood. Something about her squinted eyes made me think she might have some experience assessing wood. Did she whittle? I didn't know if anyone had asked her.

            "What do you plan to do when you're older?"

            She blinked at me. "I planned to marry Droras and maybe inherit Uncle Tiras's shop, since back then he hadn't had a child. I think his new wife's pregnant, though. I dunno. I hadn't thought about it all summer. It's all different now."

            "I was thinking, life got all different for you. But my life's always been the same here. I never planned for a future. I don't even know if I care to marry."

            Nisha shrugged. "I can't think of it. Could I love someone who isn't Droras?"

            "Do you want to stay here?"

            Nisha tilted her head to the side. "No. You know what?"

            "What?"

            "I think, in a year or so when it hurts less, I'll go on pilgrimage. You know, to Vivec and wherever, to see the shrines. I'd really love to go to the Fields of Kummu, too."

            I brushed my hair from my eyes. "That sounds wonderful," I said. "Maybe, maybe I could go with you?"

            Nisha shrugged and turned back towards the smudge on the coast that was Khuul. "Maybe," she said, "If you're very nice to me."

            I smiled wryly. "Well, I'll give it a try."

            With the tide inching its way closer, we walked back to Khuul together. I sniffed the air. The wind had shifted around, and now it was blowing from the south.


End file.
